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Tatiana Onegin
|birth=2507 |death= |civid= |rank= |gender=Female |height= |weapons= |equipment= |vehicles= |hair= |eyes=*Brown (pre-reconstructive surgery) *Blue (post-reconstructive surgery) |augment=*Minor muscle and reflex enhancers *Nerve stimulants |cyber=*Prosthetic arm |medical= |era=* * * |types= |notable= |affiliation=*The Syndicate * }} Tatiana Onegin, also known by the codename “Lilith,” was a criminal enforcer who rose to become a high ranking agent for the Syndicate and later a key member of the clandestine organization “Canaan.” Taken from her family at a young age as part of the Syndicate’s widespread human trafficking business, Tatiana was brought to the world of Iskander where she was pressed into service as an indentured servant at the estate of Tobias Lensky, the Syndicate’s founder. Lensky found that Tatiana’s genes matched the requirements for his experiments in human augmentation and used her first as a test subject and then as the mother of his two genetically altered sons. After both of her children were appropriated as part of Lensky’s dealings with the Office of Naval Intelligence, a sickly Tatiana was discarded and forgotten. The dying woman was encountered by the assassin-for-hire David Kahn, who nursed her back to health before training her to be one of his agents. After splitting with her teacher, Tatiana took on mercenary contracts from all corners of the criminal underworld, proving herself to be a highly lethal combatant. She eventually returned to the very organization that had enslaved her, climbing the ranks of the Syndicate until she was one of Helen Powell’s most trusted agents. Charged with overseeing some of the criminal organization’s most important operations, Tatiana was a key part of the Knight program’s leadership. Biography The Merchandise "Nothing Special About Her" Tatiana was born in 2507 on the colonial planet . The colony was riddled with poverty and had little in the way of natural resources, resulting in it receiving little attention from either the or the . Instead, the planet was controlled by a loose collective of criminal organizations and that kept the populace under control through a cycle of extortion and debt collection. Tatiana's parents were no exception to the rule of poverty that governed Gilgamesh. Her mother and father were both street vendors who owed the local gangs large sums of money. Tatiana, their only child, garnered very little attention from her parents as they worked feverishly to pay back their debts. She received no formal education and as soon as she was old enough she began working as an extra set of hands at her father's food stall. Though she occasionally played with other children her age, Tatiana knew little of life beyond the day in and day out work she struggled to perform alongside her parents. With little knowledge of the wider galaxy or even the planet beyond the settlement her parents worked in, Tatiana grew up expecting little from life besides the hardship that defined her family's life. When Tatiana was twelve years old, the local enforcers lost patience with her family's failure to pay off their debts. Unbeknownst to the Onegins, a new organization was beginning to press in on the various crime groups scattered throughout the colonies. The ripples from this new movement put pressure on independent criminals to bolster their own profits, which meant pressing the communities under their control even harder. With the Onegins unable to pay off the debts they had incurred, the enforcers issued an ultimatum: offer their daughter as payment or be made examples of. Tatiana's parents quickly agreed to hand her over to the enforcers. The young girl was taken from the only life she had ever known and transported off-world, becoming yet another piece of human merchandise in the lucrative human trafficking trade that pervaded the colonial underworld. She spent the next year crammed aboard a cramped freighter alongside hundreds of other captives as she was shuttled from planet to planet. The freighter lacked cryo units, which meant both crew and cargo had to endure months-long jumps each time they traveled to a new system. The freighter crew often amused themselves by brutalizing some of their less valuable "merchandise." Witnessing the cruel treatment endured by her fellow captives, Tatiana quickly learned to keep her head down and avoid attracting attention. After thirteen grueling months on the freighter, Tatiana was finally disembarked on the Inner Colony world of Iskander. Unlike many of the impoverished Outer Colonies, Iskander was a prosperous world with law enforcement that prevented the criminals from selling their wares in the open. Tatiana was quickly delivered to a bar in one of Iskander's slums, where her experience working at her father's food stall saw her put to work in the establishment's kitchen. Though her living conditions were little better than what she had known on the freighter, Tatiana saw firsthand the brutal consequences for resisting her lot in life and worked hard to remain useful to the establishment staff. With no experience to suggest otherwise, she fully expected to spend the rest of her life working in the bar kitchen. Though Tatiana worked hard to please her overseers, her unsanitary living conditions finally caught up with her and she fell ill. She tried to conceal her sickness for as long as she could, but was soon exposed by one of her fellow kitchen workers. Angry that Tatiana might have infected some of her customers, the bar owner had the girl beaten and planned to have her thrown out to fend for herself. Tatiana was only saved when one of the bar's patrons stepped in and had one of his companions stop the beating. This man was quickly revealed to be Tobias Lensky, a wealthy local and ringleader of the criminal organization that controlled much of Iskander's economy. On a whim, Lensky arranged for Tatiana to be taken back to the estate where he lived with his wife, Jocasta Powell. There she was nursed back to health and trained to work as a maid on the estate. Although still little more than an indentured servant, Tatiana found herself treated far better at the Powell estate. She adored Tobias, the first person to ever express any sort of interest in her well-being. The crime lord, for his part, often passed time by visiting with the servants and ensured that Tatiana was finally given a basic education. Despite her impoverished background, Tatiana took to her studies as diligently as she had worked to improve her skills in the kitchen and before long she could read and write and constantly expressed an interest to learn more. A year after Tatiana had been brought to work at the Powell estate, she found herself drawn into Tobias Lensky’s pet scientific projects. With much of his criminal endeavors being handled by lieutenants and his relationship with his wife tepid at best, a bored Lensky amused himself by taking up elements of genetic research he had learned of through his contacts at the UNSC’s Office of Naval Intelligence. In need of an extra pair of hands to help with his lab work, he chose Tatiana primarily because her status as a newcomer to the estate staff meant she was less likely to disclose details of what she was doing to other people. Most of Tatiana's work simply involved carrying out Lensky's instructions within his personal lab, a task she took to gladly out of loyalty to the man she saw as her savior. Over the course of the lab work, Lensky had one of his researchers take a sample of the girl's DNA on a whim. To his surprise, the researchers discovered that Tatiana's genes were a near-perfect match with the parameters they needed to continue their experimentation. The only other subject they had encountered with similar results was Lensky himself. Eager to continue the research and curious to discover the potential of a union with such a unique find, the crime lord convinced Tatiana to come to bed with him. Eager to please the man she owed everything to, Tatiana willingly slept with Lensky. She soon became pregnant, and Lensky helped her conceal it from the other estate staff even as he had his research work to tweak the fetus's genetics in utero. Tatiana gave birth to her first child, a boy, whom she named Arthur. The Mother "I'm Happy Here" In the years following Arthur's birth, Tatiana continued to work on the Powell estate. Although her youth and the circumstances surrounding her son's birth caused some amount of consternation among the rest of the service staff, Tatiana asked for few allowances and continued to perform all of her duties along with the new responsibilities of motherhood. Arthur was cared for at a private center run near the estate and several of the older staff members helped her in the task of raising the infant after her work day was done. Though the combination of work and motherhood was exhausting, Tatiana was filled with a joy and sense of purpose that she had never felt in her life, even before she had been sold into servitude. She felt she owed all of her happiness to Tobias and his charismatic—albeit covert—affection was just as valuable to her as her son's growth. Hiding his role in Tatiana's pregnancy from his wife, Tobias no longer asked her to assist with his science team's research. He did ask that she let his personal doctors run a series of gene tests on Arthur, a request she saw no reason to refuse. Tobias passed off his interest in the young Arthur off as concern for the welfare of a teen mother and her child, though his true intention was to gauge the effectiveness of the experimental gene modifications he had used during Arthur's conception. Though the nature of these experiments—of which she had only a passing understanding—occasionally brought Tatiana passing concern, she trusted fully in Tobias's benevolence. Observing from afar the loveless marriage between her benefactor and Jocasta, Tatiana was convinced that she was the true source of all his affection. Arthur grew up quickly, amazing Tatiana with his swift development. The boy was a fast learner and by the age of four he was reading and even even beginning to write. For a girl who had not been given a formal education until her early teens, Arthur's budding intelligence was a constant source of pride. Tobias delighted Tatiana by allowing Arthur to attend private tutoring sessions along with Helen Powell, his daughter by Jocasta. Still acting under the guise of providing charity for the unfortunate girl from the slums, Tobias assured Tatiana that her son would be given all of the education and opportunities that she had been denied. However, the patrician Jocasta disapproved of the attention her husband was giving a member of the service staff. Equally unsatisfied with her political marriage as Tobias was, Jocasta was proud of her family's wealth and reputation and resented the fact that Tobias was using it to advance the cause of organized crime. Oblivious to the growing friction in the Powell family, Tatiana continued happily on raising Arthur. She was fully convinced that Tobias loved her just as much as she loved him and that he would do everything in his power to provide for her and her son. Several years after Arthur's birth, Tobias surprised Tatiana by asking her to bear another child. This new child would not be the result of a union between Tobias and Tatiana; she would instead act as the surrogate mother for a highly modified strain of Tobias's DNA. Though she wanted to please Tobias, Tatiana did not want to divert attention from Arthur and politely turned her benefactor down. Tobias appeared to accept the refusal, but a few months later asked Tatiana to resume helping with his lab work. It had been years since she had worked in the research labs, but Tatiana saw little harm in the work. Again working with Tobias's research team, Tatiana allowed herself to undergo a handful of relatively minor experimental drug tests. Months later, Tatiana fell ill and assumed that she was suffering from side effects of the research. It was only after being examined by the estate's medical staff that she learned the truth: she was pregnant with another child. Tobias had used the tests as a front to implant an embryo in her body without her consent. "I Was So Stupid" Horrified by the unexpected pregnancy, Tatiana desperately turned to Tobias for an explanation. He casually admitted what he had done and shattered the illusions and assumptions she had been living with for years. Tobias fully expected her to carry the pregnancy to term and told her in no uncertain terms that he would not allow her to abort the fetus. After spending nearly a decade happily in the Powell estate's employ, Tatiana had no external resources to fall back on for help. Seeing no choice but to do as Tobias wished, Tatiana struggled to come to terms with what he had done to her. Trying to maintain the belief that Tobias loved her, she slipped into a state of manic denial. As her health deteriorated, Tatiana's condition became impossible to hide. A confused Arthur tried to protect his mother by taking up her work duties but it was not long before news of the pregnancy reached Jocasta's ears. The Powell heiress had long suspected that her husband was an adulterer; the possibility that he had been philandering with a young member of the estate staff humiliated her beyond words. Suddenly confronted by his infuriated wife, Tobias realized that his marriage--and more importantly, the protection the Powell family provided his organization--was in jeopardy. In a desperate effort to placate Jocasta, Tobias had Tatiana and Arthur turned out of the estate and sent to live in Iskander's impoverished slums. Tatiana had never dreamed that the man who had taken her in and given her everything she had ever wanted could discard her so easily. Slipping into a state of feverish depression, she very nearly miscarriaged her unwanted child. Only the swift action of a black market doctor discretely sent by Tobias saved the pregnancy. Shortly later, the same doctor helped deliver the baby boy in Tatiana's squalid apartment. As Tatiana slowly came to terms with the horrific turn her life had taken, she saw in her second son the cause of all her suffering and refused to even acknowledge the infant for the first year of his life. Since Tatiana would have nothing to do with the baby, all the responsibility of feeding and caring for the sickly infant fell upon a frightened and bewildered Arthur. Arthur took it upon himself to name the baby Simon and it was only thanks to his efforts that the child survived amidst the Onegin family's utter misfortune. In the years that followed her ejection from the Powell estate, Tatiana existed in a haze of grief and despair. Most days she was unable to muster the energy to even leave her squalid apartment and before long she had wasted away into a shadow of her former self. The only light left in her life was Arthur, upon whom had fallen the responsibility of eking out the credits needed to keep his mother and brother alive. Lost in her own self-pity and remorse, Tatiana barely noticed the crushing pressure her grief leveled at her son as he struggled to take on odd jobs while comforting his mother and raise his brother as best he could. On more than one occasion Arthur stripped their apartment of knives or other sharp objects, fearful that his mother might attempt to take her own life—or Simon's. The miserable young woman seemed to have lost the will to live, and she took no notice as Arthur took to petty thievery to obtain food and medicine. Before long Arthur was arrested and the last shred of Tatiana's former happiness was bundled away in a police van. Stripped of even her beloved son, Tatiana was left alone with Simon, a daily reminder of what the man she loved had inflicted on her. Shortly after Arthur's arrest, Tatiana snapped and tried to kill Simon after he accidentally shattered a plate. Overhearing the commotion, the neighbors from the adjacent apartment intervened to save the boy's life. Tatiana fled the apartment before the police could arrive, a broken shell of a woman lost in the midst of Iskander's slums. The Pupil "Broken. Castoff. Perfect." With nowhere left to go, Tatiana spent the next few days aimlessly wandering the city alleyways. The hated Simon was gone, but she also had no hope of ever seeing her beloved Arthur again. Tatiana's misery overwhelmed her and she collapsed, wanting nothing more than to die and escape the hell her life had become.She lay in an alley for nearly two days, ignored by all passers-by, until a woman named Truvia Vallen came upon her limp form. Truvia nursed the weakened Tatiana back to health, but her help was by no means altruistic. Tatiana's savior was an associate of an underworld assassin named David Kahn and Tatiana was precisely the kind of nameless outcast Kahn needed to eliminate his next mark. Still dazed and traumatized, Tatiana offered no resistance when Truvia armed her with a pistol and forced her to approach a nearby government office. The gun-wielding Tatiana attracted the attention of the office's security staff, creating a hole in the building's security that allowed Kahn to slip in and eliminate the official his employers wanted dead. Truvia had sent Tatiana in as an expendable decoy, expecting that the emaciated young woman would be quickly apprehended or killed by the security teams. But acting on instinct, Tatiana escaped the security officers and slipped away in the confusion surrounding the official's assassination. Kahn, impressed by Tatiana's success, tracked her down and offered her a deal: in exchange for her continued help in his jobs, he would train her as one of his accomplices. Though Tatiana hesitated to put her trust in anyone after Lensky's betrayal, she had nothing left to lose. She accepted Kahn's offer without hesitation. Kahn was a harsh but effective teacher. His daily training regimen broke Tatiana’s malnourished body down before building it back up with grueling physical exercise. When not training Tatiana worked as a courier for local criminals, running messages for illegal business deals to avoid catching the attention of police. Training in one of Kahn’s many safehouses, she learned the fundamentals of basic military skills, weapons handling, and hand to hand combat. Though he often used colleagues to assist with his new assistant’s training, Kahn favored hands-on instruction and oversaw much of it personally. Despite Kahn’s brutal training Tatiana finally had an outlet through which she could forget the pain of Lensky’s betrayal and the loss of Arthur. She quickly discovered that she took naturally to the lethal skillset Kahn trained her to inherit. On her first real job she picked off one of Kahn’s targets from the top of a skyscraper with a sniper rifle. After months of drilling on Kahn’s firing range, Tatiana’s first kill brought her immense satisfaction. Confident that she had taken his training to heart, Kahn arranged for Tatiana to become a hired enforcer for his chief employer: the vast criminal network known as the Syndicate. Though her jobs were initially mundane guard and watch duties, Tatiana’s diligence distinguished her as an effective enforcer even among hardened criminals and military veterans. Tatiana embraced her newfound criminal profession with the same eagerness with which she treated Kahn’s training. But one unsettling rumor disturbed her new lease on life: it was impossible for her not to pick up on clues and idle chatter tying the Syndicate in to Tobias Lensky. But it was not until Kahn unsuspectingly introduced her to his chief employer that she learned the full truth. Tobias Lensky, the man who used and abandoned her, was the illusive head of the Syndicate empire. Tatiana found herself escorted onto the grounds of the Powell estate—the very estate where she had once served as a maid. Re-introduced to Lensky on Kahn’s recommendation, she wisely showed no emotion as she met with her former lover. But though she asked nothing of Lensky she was privately shocked when he offered no news on the fate of her son Arthur. The criminal mastermind expressed only mild amusement to find how Tatiana had fared. Masking her seething rage, Tatiana expressed only her desire to continue climbing the Syndicate’s ranks. No doubt relishing the irony, Lensky happily appointed her as a bodyguard to his daughter Helen. "Together, We Can Make Something Great" Tatiana assumed her duties as Helen's bodyguard with her soul in turmoil. She despised the Powell heiress for everything she and Arthur had been forced to endure and considered using her new position to exact bloody revenge. But she also feared that the ever-manipulative Lensky anticipated her taking such action and was simply lying in wait as he toyed with her. But even as Tatiana grappled with her dilemma, Kahn's training paid off. Despite her angry doubts Tatiana proved herself a highly capable bodyguard, shepherding her young charge through the daily dangers that came with being Lensky's daughter. Tatiana's skill did not go unnoticed by Helen who soon uncovered the truth that her new bodyguard had once been Lensky's mistress. Rather than resenting Tatiana for the role she'd played in her mother's humiliation, Helen instead used the connection to grow closer to Tatiana. When Helen trusted her enough to fully let down her defenses, Tatiana was shocked to discover that Lensky's own daughter shared her hatred for him. Helen not only despised Lensky for his treatment of her mother but also believed he had failed as the Syndicate's leader. With the Covenant onslaught throwing the old Earth-centered order into chaos, Helen saw her father throwing away golden opportunities to expand the Syndicate's influence with his hedonistic pursuit of personal enjoyment. Tatiana's surprise at Helen's true feelings did not last long. She quickly agreed to help the young woman seize control of the Syndicate. Over the course of several months Tatiana helped Helen lay the foundations for her coup. On the pretext of carrying out her father's business Helen traveled through the Syndicate's criminal network, identifying potential allies and obstacles in her quest to dethrone her father. Tatiana accompanied Helen on most of these trips, learning much from her charge's scheming even as she gained more of Helen's trust. Tatiana's presence at Helen's side that she was soon considered a high-ranking member of the Syndicate in her own right despite her relative lack of seniority within the organization. As Helen's protector, confidant, and perhaps even the closest thing the young woman had to a friend, Tatiana found herself embroiled in galactic affairs she would never have dreamed of as a half-starved, despairing street waif. When a squad of gunmen attacked Helen's transport on one of her businessmen, Tatiana reacted with brutal efficiency to save her charge's life. Believing Lensky had caught wind of her plan and was moving to eliminate his daughter-turned-rival, Helen set her takeover plan into motion. Mercenaries stormed Lensky's estate and safehouses, accomplishing in mere hours what law enforcement agents had been trying to do for years. Tatiana watched with vindictive satisfaction as Helen and her military advisors orchestrated the complex operation to bring the once-powerful Tobias Lensky to his knees. Lensky himself escaped the assault even as his entire organization fell under Helen's sway. Tatiana eagerly gave chase as her former lover tried to escape the planet but found her path blocked by an unexpected obstacle: David Kahn. Even as the tides in the criminal underworld shifted, Kahn's loyalty was governed by a last-minute contract to smuggle his long-time employer to safety. Tatiana clashed with her mentor in a close-quarters brawl and surprised even herself when she gained the upper hand over the legendary assassin. Tatiana overpowered Kahn and would have killed him had Helen not ordered her to spare his life. Though Lensky used the opportunity to escape into hiding, Tatiana emerged from her duel with Kahn utterly triumphant. In defeating Kahn and unseating Lensky she once again rose above her circumstances to surpass the role of a mere hired gun in the Syndicate's employ. As Helen's right hand she now held a place of immense power in the Syndicate-power she had no intention of letting go to waste. Any Syndicate officers who hoped Helen would prove easy to manipulate were proven sadly mistaken. Tatiana spent the year after the change in power hunting down any officials foolish enough to question their new leader’s authority. Working with experienced ex-military enforcers she absorbed knowledge of special operations tactics and procedures with the same hungry talent she had shown in Kahn’s safehouse. Her rise to power offered her release from her painful past and she embraced her new role as the Syndicate’s chief enforcer. Tatiana ruthlessly carried out every mission Helen gave her and soon developed a reputation that ranked her among decades-old legends in the criminal underworld. The Dragon "An Offer You Can't Refuse The Human-Covenant War ended shortly after Helen seized control of the Syndicate. Just as Helen predicted, the galactic chaos left in the war’s wake offered her organization immense opportunities for aggressive expansion. Tatiana became the chief architect of that expansion, traveling with Helen across the remaining Inner Colonies and galactic frontier to bring smaller criminal enterprises into the Syndicate’s fold—willingly or otherwise. Before long the Syndicate controlled or influenced nearly every criminal enterprise in human space. It became a vast, shadowy leviathan with strands of influence embedded in governments, militaries, and colonies across the galaxy. Tatiana soon found herself charged with maintaining order within that leviathan as Helen worked to expand the Syndicate even further. Personality and Traits Mental Overview Thanks to her harsh upbringing, the deprivations she experienced as a victim of Syndicate human trafficking, and Tobias Lensky's callous betrayal Tatiana developed a harsh, pitiless worldview that served her well in her role as the Syndicate's chief enforcer. Having endured her own trials and tribulations and risen up from nothing to a position of power, Tatiana had neither the time nor the patience for weakness from her subordinates, enemies, or the subjects of the Syndicate's bloody business. Though she practiced a calm and collected demeanor behind it lurked a seething rage that fueled the execution of her violent duties. Experienced in seeking out and exploiting opportunities, Tatiana often won her battles not by overpowering her enemy outright but by seeking out weaknesses and striking at the most opportune moment. Though her alliance with the Created provided a greater purpose to direct her energies, she was haunted by the ghosts of her past that continued to haunt her in spite of all her successes. She loathed Tobias Lensky for the pain he had inflicted on her, but reserved a particular hatred for her unwanted child Simon. She saw his very existence as a mockery of her own triumphs and devoted a great deal of energy to eliminating him--a fixation that would be her undoing. Skills and Abilities Gallery tatiana young.jpg|Tatiana was a young girl when her parents sold her into indentured servitude. tatiana enforcer.png|Tatiana during her early years as an enforcer for the Syndicate. tatiana_surgery.png|Tatiana Onegin, Helen Powell's chief lieutenant.